1 Fireworks! Hot dogs! Parades! What a wonderful day for a family picnic! The Fourth of July holiday is all of these things. But why do we have a special celebration for a day in July? We usually have a party to celebrate somebody's birthday. Well, the Fourth of July is a special birthday. It is the birthday of our country. The official name for the Fourth of July holiday is Independence Day. Let's see if we can discover some of the reasons it has become such a special day in our country.2 A long time ago, over four hundred years ago to be exact, there were some very unhappy people living in Europe. Europe is a continent across the Atlantic Ocean, almost 4000 miles from where we live now. England is joined together with other countries in the area to form Great Britain. In the 1500's and 1600's, the person in charge of Great Britain was a king or queen. A king or queen is sometimes called a monarch. Kings and queens can make their own rules and tell people what to do and what to think. Many people in Great Britain did not like the king or queen telling them what to do, especially when it came to how they were to worship God. These people were so unhappy with the monarch that several groups of them decided to leave Great Britain to find new homes somewhere else. They wanted to be free to worship however they pleased. There weren't many places that they could go to.